(Space Ranger) Differentiating Equipment

[Josh Roby]

Technically speaking, CS, you don't even need the Main/Sidekick distinction.  Hooray for Troupe Play!

[CSBone]

Joshua!

How would you then make a distinction between a Character being used as Equipment and a Character being played?

C. S. Bone

[Josh Roby]

The short answer, CS, is that you don't have to.

The long answer:
I can't find Vincent's thing about character sheets and player credibility.  Vincent, that needs to go on your Hardcore Theory page. =P  I'll paraphrase from what I remember, CS.

The function of a character sheet is not to describe a character (it might also do that as a side effect).  The function of a character sheet is to list player credibility resources.  The character sheet is just a big ol list of means by which you-the-player can affect the fiction.  Your character sheet has Mechanics-4?  Great, that means that you get to roll dice and try to turn the fictional busted machinery into fictional working machinery.  Your character is not affecting the fiction; you are as a player.  The fictional character weilding a fictional wrench is just how we explain and rationalize the effect of your very non-fictional verbal statement, "I got a crit success on Mechanics."

Now, since the "character sheet" is a listing of player resources, it does not need to be character-based at all.  Since we're going with a Star Wars meme, here, a three-player game might use "Team Sheets" instead of character sheets, and they'd look something like this:

Player One: Luke Skywalker 10d6, Blue Lightsaber 2d10, R2-D2 5d10, C3PO 2d4, X-Wing Fighter 3d6
Player Two: Han Solo 5d6, Blaster 3d6, Chewbacca 2d8, Bowcaster 2d6, Milenium Falcon 2d8
Player Three: Darth Vader 8d6, Tarkin 2d6, Death Star 8d4, Emporer Palpatine 7d6, TIE Interceptor 2d4

So example play: Luke and Han go try and rescue Leia.  Players One and Two roll Luke and Artoo and Han and Blaster.  Player Three rolls Death Star -- even if Vader, Tarken, and Palpatine don't show up.  Similarly, when Lando takes the Falcon against the second Death Star, Player Two keeps rolling dice for the Falcon, even though none of his characters are at the helm.

Now if you really really wanted to, you could tie the individual 'equipment' entries to individual characters, so you can only use Bowcaster when Chewie's in the scene.  That's a relatively minor point and falls under the more general heading of 'when can you use which resource'.

Also note that, while I lined the three players up under some loose factions, there's no reason why one player can't run Leia, Lando, the Falcon, and Tatoine.

Any of that make sense, CS?

[Sydney Freedberg]

You might want to check out Capes as the hardcore form of "characters? equipment? whatever!" A "character" in Capes can be a person, a piece of equipment, a place, an abstract idea, a personality trait, even a situation -- e.g. I once wrote up "searching the office" as a character with abilities like "what's this stuck behind the desk?" and "hidden safe" and "someone's coming!"

Here's the neat thing: The way you break up the fictional elements into mechanical elements says something about the story, and changes how you tell it. Think about the difference between having R2D2 as a character trait for Luke versus having R2D2 as a separate character, or having "Darth Vader" as a character with the character trait "Has fallen to the Dark Side" versus having "Darth Vader" as a character and "The Dark Side in Darth Vader" as a separate character capable of acting against him. Do you see how different Vader's internal struggle becomes when it's two separate "characters" in the game?